This has to be one of the best car chases I’ve ever seen in a TV show. I say that not just because it’s filmed in some hilly Los Angeles neighborhoods, and not just because of the gorgeous Stepfanie Kramer, and not just because of the impressive driving and stunts. No, this has to be one of the best car chases I’ve ever seen because the villains are wringing the crap out of an Oldsmobile Firenza. A little baby blue J-Car sedan in a high-octane car chase. Brilliant.

I spent an afternoon trawling through TVSTUNTER UK’s huge collection of 80s action show scenes and this is far and away my favorite. Sure, there are some continuity errors, like the Firenza swapping its wire wheel covers for rally wheels, but I’ve seen more egregious errors in newer shows – I seem to recall Wayne Palmer getting run off the road in 24 and his Lexus LS430 became an LS400 and then finally a Toyota Avalon.

Sit back and enjoy the clip. I don’t know about y’all, but I love it when a car chase features something you wouldn’t expect to see featured in a car chase!

Handbrake turn much? Sheesh, there were at least three times when you can see the Firenza’s back tires being locked up and smoking as it goes around corners.

OTOH, both the Firenza and Daytona got some serious air, particularly towards the end. I wonder how many cars they went through doing those jumps. It’s particularly noteworthy that they actually show the cars landing. Most times, there’s so much damage to the front suspension and sheetmetal when they hit the ground, they don’t show it.

I’m going to guess this particular episode was filmed towards the end of the season as I doubt they had many cars left after this chase scene.

Landing downhill as all of these jumps were is probably more like a landing ramp I imagine. Most TV/movie jumps where you don’t see the landing don’t have a landing ramp at the other end land flat and faceplant the cars, which requires less calculations and crumpling the nose is a softer landing for drivers than bottoming out the suspension.

Great point about the difference between a car landing on a downward incline mimicking a ramp as opposed to one landing on a flat surface. It certainly explains when the landing is shown, and when it isn’t.

If you look it shows that the chase scene was actually towards the end of the first season (se01 ep17 is code for season 01 episode 17….out of 20 something episodes/year).

And if you were/are a big fan of Hunter you will recall it was a running gag for several seasons that Hunter would never end a shift with his car intact. Consequently, halfway through the first episode the department exchanges his near new Dodge for a series of “hoopties”. I often wondered where there managed to get such wrecks of a cars that still ran decently.
BTW, towards the end of McCall’s run on the show she (finally) switched to a Dodge Dynasty and never had a “real” chase scene after that….it was all Hunter in the chases.

Before they went to slow motion, the other quite lame effect they’d use would be to undercrank the camera while filming. When later viewed at normal speed, the cars would all look like they were going much faster than they really were.

It’s a real cheap effect and quite obvious to even the untrained eye. Cars that are actually being driven fast have a certain appearance. A cop once told me how they used to be able to spot speeders because air would rush under suspensions and there would be significantly more space between the tires and bodywork. A great example of this is towards the end of Bullitt when profile shots of the Charger and Mustang would show the higher stance.

With the tighter suspensions and aerodynamics of newer cars, it’s not nearly as apparent.

Yeah I cannot stand it when they undercrank, I pretty much write off any movie that does it past the silent movie era. it’s most obvious in turns and on bumpy roads, flat straight roads can pull it off seamlessly, like the Jag vs. Challenger scene in Vanishing Point(I never knew that scene was undercranked until I read a making of blog about it)

The 7 Ups is an even better example than Bullitt, that wallowing Grand Ville would look absurd if the film were undercranked, at real speed it looked so intense.

I noticed the wheelcover right away, and I give the show some credit for sticking with it as every scene afterwards that shows that side of the car has the wheelcover off the LF tire (but for the very end with the rally wheels.)

That’s a classic Hollywood technique and actually quite a surprise they did it here. Normally, budgets are so tight on television shows, they only film a chase with one exterior camera and one (or maybe two, depending on the stars) interior cameras for the two cars.

But, yeah, here they definitely got their money’s worth for the multiple exterior cameras. It seems like they used multiple shots for every slide around a corner and certainly for every time they went airborne.

I was dissapointed that it wasn’t a Ferrari Daytona. The headline reads, “Daytona Versus Firenza”. My other comment is that neither the drivers nor the passengers were wearing seat belts. With all the swerves and jumps how could they have stayed in their seats?

I can say I did a chase something like this, back in the 80’s… My mother had an 84 Chrysler Laser (twin to the Daytona here). I learned how to drive in it. A good friend always drove his parents’ Buick Skylark (the little FWD kind like this Firenza, not the big RWD tanks from the 70’s) Since we lived out in the sticks, there were lots of windy farm roads we could drive like idiots on. The Laser handled VERY well, especially compared to the Colonnade Malibu we had as our other car. The Laser was the base model, 2.2/5-speed (NON turbo) so it wasn’t particularly fast. The Skylark my friend drove, had the 2.8 V6, so he beat me off the line every time, but the Laser cornered (and stopped) better. He did jump a set of train tracks in it later, at a big “humped” crossing (all the dumb teenagers tried to “get air” at this crossing) Well, he waited until the middle of the night so he could run several stop signs to be able to get up to top speed before hitting the crossing, so maybe 50-60mph. He flew many car lengths, but when he landed, the struts (and half the engine) smashed through the hood! Obviously it totaled the car, brought all the town cops over there, and his parents took his license away from him. I still see him, and his jump still comes up in conversation, like had cellphones been a thing, it would have ended up on YouTube. We don’t have any photo/video evidence of it, but the huge gouges and oil slick stayed on the road until the crossing got updated. Kids, maaaan….

Short version: if that Daytona was a Turbo model, it would have caught that Firenza easily, especially if it was a 4-cylinder Firenza. The Daytona would have easily out-handled it, too.. They must have “beefed up” those cars, because one jump like that destroyed my friend’s similar car…

Apparently it is cheaper to use current new cars in filming TV and movies, in particular recent releases. Manufacturers have plenty of cars they can’t sell to the public, so a police chase is getting sent off in style.